The ultimate display technology Micro LED has improved significantly in wafer technology, full color performance and mass transferring recently. Taiwan-based industry players have shared their insights of the technology at an industry gathering last week. Jennifer Y-C Lin, Senior Associate Vice President of AUO, indicated that Micro LED will be a key technology to drive innovative applications in the era of 5G connection and IoT, especially as the world heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. She explained that in addition to excellent display performance,...

Japan Display (JDI) is going to sell its LCD plant in Hakusan, Japan, to Sharp and Apple, so that the Japanese display maker can pay off its debt to Apple. The total transfer price is estimated to be JPY 71 billion (US$ 672 million). (Image: JDI) The plant will be transferred to Sharp, who is also a display supplier of Apple, by the end of September. With the transaction, Sharp will take over most of the debt of JDI which JDI borrowed from Apple when building the plant. The plant was originally built for supplying LCD panels for iPhone. But S...

2021 is expected to be the year that Mini LED will illuminate the display market. Apple is getting ready to launch the new iPad Pro featuring Mini LED backlight display and Samsung will probably debut new high end TV portfolio based on the technology. Recently a Korean media added that Samsung might produce about 2 million units of Mini LED backlit TV next year. With all the upcoming Mini LED display applications, the supply chain in Taiwan covering LED manufacturers and panel makers who have been dedicating to improving the display technology based on mini...

Sharp’s mass production plan for Micro LED displays marked a progress of the Foxconn Group in next-gen display technology development. Incorporates LED chip production, packaging technology, panel manufacture and TV brands, the Foxconn Group is known for its ambition to set up an internal Micro LED supply chain. The Micro LED displays developed by Sharp, a 0.38-inch full color panel featuring 1053 PPI and a 0.13-inch blue display with 3000 PPI, were designed by the semiconductor group under Foxconn and manufactured by Sharp Fukuyama Semiconductor. ...

Researchers from Taiwan’s National Tshing Hua University (NTHU) developed a method of adding salt water to quantum dots to make the materials more stable and easier for inkjet printing for optimized Micro LED display manufacture. Their results were published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, titled “Inkjet-Printed Salt-Encapsulated Quantum Dot Film for UV-Based RGB Color-Converted Micro-Light Emitting Diode Displays.” (Image: NTHU) Full color Micro LED display fabrication is challenging due to poor performanc...

Micro LED display technology based on self-emitting pixels delivers advanced contract ratio, high brightness and wide color gamut. Many believe that the technology is bringing revolutions to the display industry and can be widely adopted in different forms of applications. However, after years of development with more and more players joining the ecosystem, the fundamental issues for mass production are yet to be tackled. The most well-known difficulty of Micro LED display manufacture is mass transferring as most of the LED companies do not have equipment capable of process ...

Sharp, one of the panel providers of Apple, is reportedly developing small size Micro LED displays and will mass produce the products by 2023 for eye-wear smart devices, reported Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun. According to the report, Sharp Fukuyama Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Sharp, has developed Micro LED prototypes including a 0.38-inch full color panel featuring 1053 PPI and a 0.13-inch blue display with 3000 PPI. The company deploys its proprietary color conversion technology to achieve full color display and aims to mass produce the products in 2023 to 2024 for A...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a new article in Science Advances demonstrating a new design for LED that may overcome a long-standing limitation in the light sources' efficiency. The research team developed microscopic LEDs which achieve a dramatic increase in brightness as well as the ability to create laser light. Consisting of scientists from the University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, the team achieved 100 to 1,000 times higher brightness with LEDs...

In the second half of 2020, increasing applications based on novel display technologies are emerging in the market. Mini LED backlight technology has reached the stage of commercialization with several notebook and monitor products launched. Chinese TV brands TCL have released its Mini LED TV series and Korean giants Samsung and LG are likely to roll out Mini LED backlight TVs in the near future as well. And of course, the most expected Mini LED product would be the 12.9 iPad Pro of Apple. Meanwhile, Micro LED technology is still developing and a few...

Despite the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of novel display technologies have to go on. At the virtual Display Week held last week, there were still several new Micro LED display exhibits showcased by worldwide experts. LEDinside selects a few innovations that cannot be missed. AUO AUO exhibited an integrated full color TFT driven Micro LED automotive displays with two 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED panels. Its S-curve shape enables the display to be mounted into automotive interior design. It also demonstrated a 12.1-inch Micro...

Kyocera and Osram reported worked on a new Micro LED display driving technology. According to a report of MicroLED-info, the two companies have designed a hybrid current and PWM driving technology for Micro LED displays. The new driving scheme can be used to avoid using lower pixel currents through Micro LED chips, as described by Kyocera and Osram. As a result, the approach reduces luminance deviation and color shift even at lower grayscale levels. The new driving technology was demonstrated with Kyocera’s 3.9-inch full color Micro LED display bas...

PMOLED panel maker RiTdisplay presented a Micro LED thin film display at virtual Display Week that took place last week from August 3 to 8. The company also indicated in its investor conference last week that it has begun sending sample of Mini LED products this year and the shipment is scheduled in 2021. (Image: screenshot from RiTdisplay's video) RiTdisplay has been collaborating with Micro LED company PlayNitride since 2019 to develop Micro LED displays. The two parties exhibited a few small size Micro LED display modules for wearable appl...

On August 7, LED companies Epistar and Lextar held an extraordinary shareholders meeting to pass the share conversion of both companies to the new holding company, ENNOSTAR. The members of the board of directors, supervisors and chairman of ENNOSTAR were also elected. As expected, Epistar holds three seats in the board of directors, Lextar takes one seat and its parent company AUO gets one seat as well. The members of the board of director include Biing-Jye Lee, Chairman of Epistar; Chin-Yung Fan, President of Epistar; Shih-Shien Chang, Vice P...

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) from Taiwan continues to strengthen its Micro LED technology development. The organization joined virtual Display Week 2020 as well and presented its latest Micro LED breakthrough. (Image: screenshot from ITRI video ) ITRI showcased a flexible full color Micro LED display module at its online booth. The flexible Micro LED display sizes 60mm*30mm with a pixel pitch of 250 µm and a resolution of 240*120 (100 PPI). The display module is demonstrated as a wearable devices combining the Micro L...

Radiant Vision Systems, a subsidiary of the Konica Minolta group who experts in photometric imaging solutions for light and display measurement, announces that it will present a technical paper during the 2020 Display Week Symposium taking place online from August 3-7. Doug Kreysar, CEO of Radiant Vision Systems, will present the company’s paper titled “Fractional Pixel Method for Improved Pixel-Level Measurement and Correction (Demura) of High-Resolution Displays.” (Image: Radiant Vision Systems) The presentation will highlight the c...

As virtual Display Week goes on, Taiwan-based panel maker AUO announced its demonstration of advanced display technologies covering Micro LED automotive displays, Mini LED medical displays, a full range of gaming displays as well as display applications in smart retail and transportation. Pioneering the next generation display technology, AUO is showcasing a complete series of full color TFT driven Micro LED automotive displays. The 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED display developed jointly by AUO and PlayNitride is now integrated into a automotive display t...

The development of Micro LEDs, quantum dot (QD) displays as a next generation displays following LCDs and OLEDs are becoming popular. By reducing the chip size to less than 100 µm and 10 nm levels compared to existing LEDs, with high-definition, high color saturation, fast response and high reliability, it‘s performance surpasses conventional LCDs and OLED displays. These devices are also ideal for new applications such as AR/VR/MR/SR, automotive head-up displays (HUDs), micro projectors, and smartwatches, which are expected to expand the mark...

In the past few years, Micro LED has proven to be a very promising display technology. At this point, the industry is preparing to transition from the prototype stage to mass production. Therefore, the focus is shifting to the two major challenges that slow down Micro LED display technology commercialization: the low yield and the high cost. How to optimize the production process efficiently in order to increase yield, while simultaneously reducing cost, is the most essential challenge for Micro LED technology developers at the moment. As improving yield is a primary goal...

With a focus on the emerging Micro LED and Mini LED display markets, GE unveiled its advances with narrow-band red (PFS-KSF) and green phosphors that will accelerate their integration into these next generation display applications. These advances were highlighted during a keynote presentation by Dr. James Murphy during the SID Virtual Display Week Business Conference. GE demonstrated the new inkjet-printed red phosphor on a plastic substrate which that illustrates advances toward printing phosphors for Micro- and Mini- LED displays. (Image: GE) ...

Compound Photonics (CP) unveiled its IntelliPix™ Microdisplay Technology Platform for Micro LED featuring multiple video pipeline and system integration innovations addressing power optimization, latency, and bandwidth use with the aim to improve AR experience. (Image: Compound Photonics) CP focuses on Micro LED constant current technology platform with a MIPI interface that enables pixel-to-pixel uniformity in the emerging <5μm Micro LED display space for AR/MR near-eye applications. Given AR imagery, in general, does not fill the ...

VueReal announced that its multi device cartridge structure enables faster population of a display with higher yield and higher alignment accuracy. Most applications such as displays require more than one sub pixels with different devices per sub pixels. In case of Micro LED display, red, green, and blue Micro LEDs are required for each pixel. Moreover, most of these devices are fabricated in different environments using different material sets for higher performance. The common approach is to transfer each device independently to a large substrate. For a 4K MicroLED d...

Like several other international event, Display Week 2020 hosted by the Society for Information Display (SID) turned virtual this year and is taking place online from August 3 to 7, 2020. The virtual version of Display Week still features keynote speeches delivered by industry leaders including IBM, NVIDIA, Merch and AUO who oversee diverse technologies and product innovation within their enterprises. Other highlights addressing innovative display technologies such as Micro LED, Mini LED, OLED, foldable displays and new material are presented by...

Taiwanese panel manufacturer AUO held its investor conference yesterday and announced financial results of 2Q20. Driven by “Stay-at-home” economy, the company reported strong demand for display applications and expects the growth momentum to continue in the second half of the year. For 2Q20, AUO posted consolidated revenues of NTD 63.50 billion (US$ 2.16 million), up by 18.3% QoQ. Gross margin came to 2.7%. In the second quarter of 2020, large-sized panel shipments totaled around 30.71 million units, hiked by 37.0% QoQ. Shipments of small-and-medium-s...

Singapore based equipment supplier K&S announced financial results of its fiscal 3Q20 ended June 27, 2020. The company posted revenue of US$ 150.5 million which grown by 18.4% YoY. For the third fiscal quarter of 2020, K&S reported a gross profit of US$ 69.4 million and a gross margin of 46.1%. On the non-GAAP base, the company’s net income grew by 258.3% YoY to 12.9 million. The increased profit and revenue were boosted by the company’s recently mass produced Pixalux, which was designed to meet the high speed transfer needs in Mini LED...

Next-generation Micro/Mini LED display technologies have generated a market which companies hoping to recover from the pandemic-induced global economic downturn look to for the next wave of commercial opportunities. Furthermore, major brands including Samsung, Apple, Facebook, Google, LG, and Sony are also rushing to get a head start in Micro/Mini LED development, in turn galvanizing the growth of the overall supply chain. Total Micro/Mini LED revenue is projected to reach upwards of US$4.2 billion in 2024. TrendForce’s latest investigations find that cu...

In the first half of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the world as well as the technology industry with various interruptions occurred in the supply chain. In April, LEDinside covered how Micro LED technology could still have a chance to grow despite the COVID-19 impacts on the industry. And now, we would like to share the breakthroughs of Micro LED unveiled during the first half of the year proving that developments of the technology have not stopped by the pandemic. Micro LED Wafer and Chip Improvements Researchers have been working on...

LG Electronics has added the category of Micro LED to its Business Solution website with its Micro LED display product available for inquiry. The Micro LED TV, named LSAB009 by the company, is a 163-inch 4K screen with a pixel pitch of 0.9mm based on COB technology. (Image: LG) The Micro LED TV of LG delivers a peak brightness of 1,200 nits and typical brightness of 600 nits. The peak contrast ratio achieves 100,000:1 and the max ratio 50,000:1. LG has yet announced the release date of the product but some source said it would start shipping i...

Samsung is reportedly preparing the launch of Mini LED backlit TVs in 2021 and the increasing demands of Mini LED chips will be supplied by Taiwan and China companies, reported TechNews, a Taiwan-based online media. (Image: Samsung) By quitting the production of LCD display, the Korean giant plans to boost its high end TV products shipment based on diverse display technologies, aiming to exit the low price competition. Apart from the scheduled “The Wall” TV launch in the market of North America and Europe, Samsung might also release new TV...

Mini LED backlight display, featuring high brightness, contrast, reliability as well as longer lifetime, is regarded as a great competitor to OLED display, which is the current dominant display technology for high end consuming electronics. But higher production cost is still a pain point for Mini LED backlight display. From the viewpoint of the supply chain, driver ICs that control the local dimming zones of Mini LED backlight display could actually be a critical component to help reducing production cost. The increased production cost of Mini LED comes from the ...

ALLOS Semiconductors announced its collaboration with Prof. Ohkawa and his team at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for realizing high efficiency nitride-based red LEDs on large diameter silicon substrates. The collaboration will focus on solving fundamental issues like the large lattice mismatch and the quantum-confined Stark effect (QCSE) which limit the adoption of red nitride-based LEDs for practical industry usage. In particular, for the emerging field of Micro LED displays there is a strong demand to enable red LEDs on ...